Hiro locked the door to his room and tossed the black sphere in his hand onto his bed. He walked over to his desk and pulled out a few books from the shelves. He quickly opened the book to a page marked with a variety of notes, and he began copying down a circle filled with lines and engravings onto a sheet of paper.

Hiro held the paper to the air and then threw it behind him allowing his magic to float the piece of paper over to the door. He walked over to the other side of his room and grabbed a small bottle with a light brown liquid inside and dipped his fingers into it. He walked over to the piece of paper hanging on the door and drew a star before biting his thumb and smearing a bit of blood onto the paper.

Suddenly the piece of paper seemed began to meld with the door and all that was left was a glowing star that faintly shone a white light. Hiro inspected the door before nodding in approval.

Hiro walked over to his bed and pulled out another black sphere. He squeezed the sphere in his hand and suddenly it burst like a water balloon and a black liquid oozed out. Hiro allowed the liquid to drip out of his hands and slowly the liquid began to take on a humanoid shape.

Hiro looked at the figure and shook his head. Hiro extended his hand and allowed the black liquid to absorb some of his blood before he shook it off and used some mana to heal himself. Soon enough the liquid began to take on his appearance so he grabbed an extra uniform and quickly dressed it.

After finishing all his preparations Hiro looked at the slime doll he’d just created. While it looked exactly like him, in the end, it was still nothing more than a replica. It could replicate the texture of Human skin however in the inside it was nothing more than a bunch of goo holding its shape thanks to mana. This is why he set an alarm at the door so that way he’d immediately know if someone approached his room.

Content with his preparations Hiro grabbed the sphere on the bed and entered the world within. He slowly walked up the Karen who was still unconscious thanks to his third black sphere, and he touched her forehead with his fingers.

“Now let’s get some answers out of you.”

Hiro closed his eyes and sensed the black sphere he fused with Karen’s body. He slowly began pouring his mana into her body causing the black sphere within to slowly gather towards her brain. As Hiro opened his eyes he asked her, “Now then who are you really?”

Suddenly Karen’s eyes opened and the whites of her eyes turned pure black, “My name is…”

Karen paused, “My name is…”

Hiro suddenly felt a sudden surge of mana within Karen and furrowed his brows. He directed the black sphere to absorb all of Karen’s mana, but no matter what he did the sphere couldn’t absorb even a fraction of the mana she was exuding.

“What in the world?”

Suddenly Karen’s eyes turned pupils turned red, and her eyes still a pitch black. As she turned to Hiro her body flashed with a black light and Hiro immediately jumped backwards. Hiro’s aura flared up quickly turning from a blue to a white and he readied several spells.

Karen slowly sat up and turned to Hiro, “My name is…”

Hiro turned to the black mist Karen’s body was exuding that morphed into countless faces screaming in pain, and looked at Karen who was sitting there, “Pandora!”

~

My name is Hikari Ito and I’m what some people would call a writer. Though it was never really a passion of mine, it was more of something I stumbled into as an avid consumer of media. It just sort of happened after reading thousands of stories and seeing thousands of shows.

I just wanted to prove to the people that criticized me whenever I criticized a story that I could write a story too, not that you need to know how to write to critique. But as a student just going through the motions I thought why not try my hand at making something for once. So I took on the pen name Karen and wrote a few stories with some modicum of success.

Though what really gave me my kicks were looking at other peoples stories. It didn’t matter if they were good or bad, I just consumed everything. I mean even bad stories have some merit. They’re good premises, maybe good ideas, or even some interesting takes to a tried and true formula that they just could get right.

Though it did get tiresome at times like you wouldn’t believe how many another world stories I’ve read over the past years now. And there’s no shortage of people making ridiculous stories just for the heck of it.

But occasionally you just stumble upon these weird gems like these. The Tales from the Unknown, it was a series of stories told by a relatively new an unknown author that seemingly couldn’t be bothered to answer a single comment or review. Instead, we were merely presented with almost the same story each time.

With each tale came a new twist, perhaps there was someone from another world, or perhaps suddenly it was like a game with one of the main characters having a weirdly broken system attached to them. Sometimes it was a tragedy, a comedy, or sometimes even a diary. Each story continued to build off the last, sometimes completely retconning the last one or changing the story almost entirely.

Sometimes there would be a story in the series that attempted to change what another story just changed and to put it frankly it was a mess. But the story was founded upon the idea that there was no one main character, every character we saw and even ones we didn’t see would irreversibly change the world.

And in the end, the more I read it the more fun I just kept having with it. In the end, the story even became a minor hit and despite all its flaws a lot of people ultimately found that this over the top story was quite enjoyable.

So when the author of this series reached out and asked if anyone would like to see the next evolution of this story I almost felt obliged to offer my services. But when I got in contact with the author something truly unexpected happened.

The human known as Hikari Ito suddenly disappeared. At first, it was the chat I was in, I suddenly found I was banned from every single one of them. No matter who I tried to contact they refused to respond. Then when I tried to buy things I found my bank account didn’t exist.

When I tried to recover my account my email was gone. When I tried to call someone, anyone no one answered me. When I ran outside in a panic trying to figure out what was going on everyone ignored me. So when I went back home resigned to my fate, I found that I was locked outside my own door. The key in my hand was useless.

Pushed to the brink and with nothing else to do I merely sat outside my apartment and closed my eyes. And it was at the moment that I disappeared from my home for good.

In the end, it wasn’t something as flashy as a magic circle lightening up from under my feet so I could be whisked away to some far off world. It wasn’t as tragic as dying to save my family or even as cliche as being run over by a truck. In the end, I merely became no one and disappeared.

And when I woke up I simply became someone else, someone I wish I wasn’t...

So I suppose I should correct myself. My name isn’t Hikari Ito, it’s not even Karen. My name is Pandora, the bringer of the worst tragedy.